Easter

I have so very much to write about our Easter celebrations, about the Masters golf tournament, about life and motherhood...but all of it is going to have to wait because the only thing that seems appropriate on Easter Sunday is this passage from I Corinthians 15 (Message translation)

¹³ If there's no resurrection, there's no living Christ. And face it—if there's no resurrection for Christ, everything we've told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you've staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. Not only that, but we would be guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God, all these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised up Christ—sheer fabrications, if there's no resurrection.

^{30, 32}And why do you think I keep risking my neck in this dangerous work? It's resurrection, resurrection, always resurrection, that undergirds what I do and say, the way I live. If there's no resurrection, "We eat, we drink, the next day we die," and that's all there is to it. But don't fool yourselves.

^35-38Some skeptic is sure to ask, "Show me how resurrection works. Give me a diagram; draw me a picture. What does this 'resurrection body' look like?" If you look at this question closely, you realize how absurd it is. There are no diagrams for this kind of thing. We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a "dead" seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed. What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don't look anything alike. The dead body that we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes from it will be dramatically different.

⁵⁶ The saying will come true:
Death swallowed by triumphant Life!
Who got the last word, oh, Death?
Oh, Death, who's afraid of you now?

⁵⁸With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don't hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.

I was 13 years old when I first began to grasp the significance of the Cross and the Resurrection. But, today, 24 years later as I listened to Andy Stanley preach on this passage at Buckhead Church it was as if blinders had fallen off again. The Resurrection is the key to all that we believe. It is what makes Jesus the Christ as opposed to simply being an inspirational man.

It is why we rejoice that life does not end for us at the grave. Sin can be overcome. God sent us a Savior.

Tomorrow I'll probably write about outfits, bunnies and Easter egg hunts. I might even talk about that precious Southern Daddy that won a certain golf tourney today. But, tonight the cross is still center stage.

O, praise the One who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead. Jesus.
-Kristian Stanfill, Jesus Paid it All